NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue - 63

FEATURE
THE SCOTTSDALE ORDINANCE AT 30

What were some of the
tradeoffs you agreed to?

Ford added that city officials have often been willing to take unconventional approaches to addressing problems, such as building a
greenbelt to serve as a flood control area instead of the stark and ugly
cement channels seen in other cities that were suggested by the Army
Corps of Engineers. When it came to fire safety, the thought process
was similar, Ford said. City officials recognized that Scottsdale needed
an ordinance to protect residential property, since more fires occur in
residences than anywhere else.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the passing of Scottsdale's
ordinance, and Ford recently spoke with NFPA Journal about the challenge of making the city a "fire-protected community," acknowledging
that the fight is far from over. The battle, he said, "is just as heated as it
ever was."
What prompted Scottsdale to adopt a sprinkler
ordinance in the first place?

In 1975 we passed our first ordinance, which said if you build
anything over 7,500 square feet or anything over three stories, it had
to have automatic sprinklers. That was a direct result of the "America
Burning" report. The report said that if we want to improve fire
services and if we want to address the fire problem in America, here's
what you have to do. One of those things was to change our built environment. Sprinklering properties wasn't the only thing we did. We
improved our training. We tried to improve our equipment. We did
a lot more outreach. There's a whole lot of things "America Burning"
addressed that we did.
The impetus for all those changes came In April 1982, when our
chief, Lou Witzeman, was able to talk a developer of residential homes
into sprinklering two houses. It showed that the concept of residential
sprinklers could work. We passed our first comprehensive sprinkler
ordinance in Scottsdale three years later, in June 1985. That ordinance
said if you build in the city of Scottsdale and you increase our fire risk,
you're going to protect that property with sprinklers. The requirement for sprinklers in single-family homes went into effect six months
later, in January 1986. That's how we started building a fire-protected
community.
How did Scottsdale manage to bring so many diverse
groups-builders, planners, firefighters, and other
interests-to the table and get them all to agree to a
protective sprinkler ordinance?

We worked with a true coalition. We had our water department
there, we had our building department there, we had our planners and the development community there, we had the insurance
industry there. That model turned out to be very successful recently
in California, which passed a statewide sprinkler regulation. You
bring everybody into the coalition and you educate and explain and
look at the options. That's what we did in 1985. And it's important
to acknowledge the local leaders, policy makers, and elected officials
for the courage they've shown to implement this and to keep it in
place over the years.

Number of
deaths in
fires occuring
in sprinklered
homes in
Scottsdale

Number
of deaths
in fires in
homes without sprinklers

Number of
people saved
in fires in
sprinklered
properties
including
homes who
likely would
have died if
the properties
had not been
sprinklered

When we passed our ordinance, we looked to see
what we could include that
wouldn't necessarily pay for
sprinklers in the buildings,
but at least offset them. Today
we call those things "design
freedoms." One of those
was hydrants. We looked
at the fire flows for sprinklered versus non-sprinkled
buildings and determined
that we needed less water
for sprinklered complexes.
We reduced the fire flows a
little bit and we increased the
hydrant spacing. Hydrants
had been spaced 330 feet
apart for commercial buildings and 660 feet apart for
residential, and we basically
doubled that, to 700 feet for
commercial and 1,200 feet for
residential. That represented
a big cost savings for developers and the fire department
was ok with it too.
What other
accommodations did
Scottsdale make?

On residential construction, we put sprinklers in
the garages too because we
have a lot of garage fires. We
took out a requirement that
there be a separation between
the garage and the house
that would keep a fire from
spreading for at least an hour.
We've never counted on that
in a residential house fire. The
self-closing door between the
garage and house still has to
be there, but it doesn't have
to be a fire-rated door. We
told builders if they gave us
the corrective stuff, we'd take
away what we could.

OCTOBER 2016 NFPA JOURNAL

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - October 2016 Home Fire Sprinkler Special Issue